To me vacations are silly. I'd rather spend the money on something material that will last much longer than a few days on a beach

For many, a vacation is an essential "break" from working life that can provide manifold benefits for physical and psychological health. Beach or no beach, there is a sense that carving out time to be away from work and the usual day-to-day can be very useful. I think we go overboard, though, in how we budget for vacation - thinking that we need to spend lots of $$ to have a quality experience when the choice of company is far more important, IMO.

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"O Cross of Christ, all-holy, thrice-blessed, and life-giving, instrument of the mystical rites of Zion, the holy Altar for the service of our Great Archpriest, the blessing - the weapon - the strength of priests, our pride, our consolation, the light in our hearts, our mind, and our steps"Met. Meletios of Nikopolis & Preveza, from his ordination.

College is turning out to be more ridiculous than I initially assumed.

I pull one all-nighter and suddenly I'm a bat.

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Quote from: The Life of Ivan Neronov

[Ecclesiastics] conspired against him because they hated his teaching for its zealous emphasis on proper Christian conduct: with great courage he denounced all whom he saw behaving in an ungodly fashion... [As such] he was deprived of his priestly rank, bound in iron chains, and broken down in jails.

To me vacations are silly. I'd rather spend the money on something material that will last much longer than a few days on a beach

For many, a vacation is an essential "break" from working life that can provide manifold benefits for physical and psychological health. Beach or no beach, there is a sense that carving out time to be away from work and the usual day-to-day can be very useful. I think we go overboard, though, in how we budget for vacation - thinking that we need to spend lots of $$ to have a quality experience when the choice of company is far more important, IMO.

Something which has long become the prerogative of the very few.

If you are able to take a vacation, then you are among the very privileged and likely should spend that vacation time and use it earn some money to give to someone else who could actually use a vacation.

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So I've been thinking of making a flow chart of the choices that are presented upon graduating from high school, if you are in my generation.

You got 3 options, not including drugs, the first is going to college and graduating. The second is trying your hand at a lowly retail or supermarket job. The third is military.

Those who fall into the second option don't last long until they wind up in the military. Since those jobs feel like a dead end, the military seems like the better option (I don't think it is for many reasons).

Those that drop out of the first option, end up in the second and will try to work their way up the "corporate ladder" wherever they are or get "lucky" enough to work in an office.

Those that graduate from the first option may end up in the second one, but more likely end up in an office job that feels like a dead end.

Those from the third option finish their service and enter into civilian work, more likely either manual labor or office "work".

I point this out because the guys that graduated out of highschool followed one of these "paths". Those that do not have the cognitive capacity for higher education, who end up working for mininum wage seem to usually end up in the military. Those without any real aspirations, goals, or talents find themselves there as well.

That is not to knock the fine people in the military nor is it to insult anyone that has been in the military. You have my thanks for serving this country.

I just wish there was a 4th option that doesn't involve being burnt out on drugs or alcohol or both.

Its hard to break the mold, near all of us won't.

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“There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.”

So I've been thinking of making a flow chart of the choices that are presented upon graduating from high school, if you are in my generation.

You got 3 options, not including drugs, the first is going to college and graduating. The second is trying your hand at a lowly retail or supermarket job. The third is military.

I just wish there was a 4th option that doesn't involve being burnt out on drugs or alcohol or both.

Its hard to break the mold, near all of us won't.

It really depends on where you live though, don't it? Up here in the halibut fishing capital of the world, most folk I know go straight out of high school into the fisheries. Ostensibly, most do all right.

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Quote from: The Life of Ivan Neronov

[Ecclesiastics] conspired against him because they hated his teaching for its zealous emphasis on proper Christian conduct: with great courage he denounced all whom he saw behaving in an ungodly fashion... [As such] he was deprived of his priestly rank, bound in iron chains, and broken down in jails.

So I've been thinking of making a flow chart of the choices that are presented upon graduating from high school, if you are in my generation.

You got 3 options, not including drugs, the first is going to college and graduating. The second is trying your hand at a lowly retail or supermarket job. The third is military.

Those who fall into the second option don't last long until they wind up in the military. Since those jobs feel like a dead end, the military seems like the better option (I don't think it is for many reasons).

Those that drop out of the first option, end up in the second and will try to work their way up the "corporate ladder" wherever they are or get "lucky" enough to work in an office.

Those that graduate from the first option may end up in the second one, but more likely end up in an office job that feels like a dead end.

Those from the third option finish their service and enter into civilian work, more likely either manual labor or office "work".

I point this out because the guys that graduated out of highschool followed one of these "paths". Those that do not have the cognitive capacity for higher education, who end up working for mininum wage seem to usually end up in the military. Those without any real aspirations, goals, or talents find themselves there as well.

That is not to knock the fine people in the military nor is it to insult anyone that has been in the military. You have my thanks for serving this country.

I just wish there was a 4th option that doesn't involve being burnt out on drugs or alcohol or both.

Its hard to break the mold, near all of us won't.

Option 1.5 - trade school. Some go right into a union and take classes there. Others can get a foot in the door through contacts. My brother went to school, skipped the gen-eds, went through all the diesel classes and then took the internship class. At the end of the internship he dropped out of college and stayed on as a full time employee. They are trying to make it harder to do that because they want to milk more money out of you in school rather than kids just using it as a stepping stone into a career...that's not what school is about.

Hawkeye brings up option 2.5 - local industry. My other brother and good friend both went into nuclear security. They have taken various amounts of classes but never graduated. They make some good money doing this. Likewise, if you work in an area that still has a factory (I have been to at least two) there is that option. If you want to make good money you need to have a skill, not just be a floor sweep. Then again, one of the factory reps I know started out 30 years ago sweeping floors and now is the brand manager for North America. This is a big company, btw. He got his son a foot in the door working part time in technical service. My uncle pounded nails for a construction company and is now a project manager answering to the company president.

One thing people need to get through their heads is that in this brave new world your "merits" mean absolutely nothing. As a side note, our colleges really don't prepare you for work. If you went five years and got substandard grades in some dumbed down "studies" course, you cannot expect to get right into an industry. You need to start networking as soon as possible. Not you FB frienemies, but actual people in school and in your crap jobs who seem like they are going to succeed. Most of the people I know who have good jobs have someone who helped them get in.

This is not to say that we don't have systemic problems in this country, but problems become systemic for a reason. The body of state does not have the sniffles, it's got the HIV. This is why we need to look at bettering ourselves first and succeeding. One thing Gary Johnson said during the 2011 election season when all the digbats the GOPniks put forward were talking about job creation, he said that he had created 200 jobs, starting with himself. (He was a handyman and that grew into a full company.) That is something people don't think about when they get a dream of starting their own cupcake factory. You don't just build a company. You have to provide a service. You yourself have to give people something. Then, if there is more demand than you can provide by yourself you start adding employees and go from there.

There's something seriously wrong with parents who give names like that to their children.

You've never been to an Indian church, have you?

Please tell me you're not serious.

I wish I was joking.

Actually, my working hypothesis with many of these sorts of names is that there is an actual "Indian" name behind them, but someone decided to "translate" that into English, more often than not with inelegant results. For instance, Santosh is a fairly common male name, but I know of a priest whose parents translated that into English when he was born and now he's "Fr Happy".

But there are a number of other names which people give their kids which have no meaning at all. The names are based on rhyme, alliteration, or assonance (especially popular when having more than one child), portmanteaus of the parents' names, etc. Think of the most dreadful example you can conjure up, and I promise that and worse exists in real life.

For the record, these are never given at baptism, for which there is always some decent Christian name. But whether or not the individual retains the baptismal name as a legal name, s/he is most often known by this other name.

There's something seriously wrong with parents who give names like that to their children.

You've never been to an Indian church, have you?

Please tell me you're not serious.

I wish I was joking.

Actually, my working hypothesis with many of these sorts of names is that there is an actual "Indian" name behind them, but someone decided to "translate" that into English, more often than not with inelegant results. For instance, Santosh is a fairly common male name, but I know of a priest whose parents translated that into English when he was born and now he's "Fr Happy".

But there are a number of other names which people give their kids which have no meaning at all. The names are based on rhyme, alliteration, or assonance (especially popular when having more than one child), portmanteaus of the parents' names, etc. Think of the most dreadful example you can conjure up, and I promise that and worse exists in real life.

For the record, these are never given at baptism, for which there is always some decent Christian name. But whether or not the individual retains the baptismal name as a legal name, s/he is most often known by this other name.

But there are a number of other names which people give their kids which have no meaning at all. The names are based on rhyme, alliteration, or assonance (especially popular when having more than one child), portmanteaus of the parents' names, etc. Think of the most dreadful example you can conjure up, and I promise that and worse exists in real life.

Two of my part-srilankan second cousins in the US are called Carissa Shalini and Fenella Eden. I don't think their names mean much in Sinhalese, though...

Actually, my working hypothesis with many of these sorts of names is that there is an actual "Indian" name behind them, but someone decided to "translate" that into English, more often than not with inelegant results. For instance, Santosh is a fairly common male name, but I know of a priest whose parents translated that into English when he was born and now he's "Fr Happy".

But there are a number of other names which people give their kids which have no meaning at all. The names are based on rhyme, alliteration, or assonance (especially popular when having more than one child), portmanteaus of the parents' names, etc. Think of the most dreadful example you can conjure up, and I promise that and worse exists in real life.

For the record, these are never given at baptism, for which there is always some decent Christian name. But whether or not the individual retains the baptismal name as a legal name, s/he is most often known by this other name.

Not to worry! Should you be willing to embrace Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, you still have a chance at getting a decent Greek or Slavic name.

I'm sure he has a good, Christian name which he received at baptism, even if that's not what most people call him. I don't know that Chalcedonian Orthodoxy would change that without making him look like one of those hyperdox who suddenly emerge from the font as Amphilochios Patterson.

Not to worry! Should you be willing to embrace Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, you still have a chance at getting a decent name.

Lol, I actually have it way better than most thanks to Ramon Estevez and family. The worst part is probably either people thinking my first name is my last name and vice versa or the Jimmy Neutron references that grow old after the billionth time.

Over the past half-century or more I have gone through scores of green toothbrushes. I've tried other colours but they don't do nearly as good a job as the green ones. For some reason, after thirty-eight and a half years of being married, my wife went out and bought herself a green toothbrush. It's a different style from mine, but the inevitable has happened. I don't have the nerve to raise the subject with her. She has never hinted at anything about it either, so I'm guessing we're about even on that score !

In 1977 at the Southern Methodist University she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number; she answered in 50 seconds.[1][4] Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the U.S. Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.[11]

On June 18, 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers — 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 — picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds.[2][3] This event is mentioned in the 1982 Guinness Book of Records.[2][3]

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“There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.”

How are monks then capable of surviving with less food and sleep than the average person, and also thriving? Maybe it is because the Grace of God partially replaces the physiological processes.

Though it doesn't follow the pattern perfectly, monks follow a sleeping schedule more closely akin to humankind's received evolutionary pattern, which we have been trying to reprogram for the last couple of centuries.

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Blessed Nazarius practiced the ascetic life. His clothes were tattered. He wore his shoes without removing them for six years.

THE OPINIONS HERE MAY NOT REFLECT THE ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED ORTHODOX CHURCH